Monthly Archives: June 2012

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On Wednesday, Google introduced their new Nexus 7 tablet to the world (click here for an overview). At 7 inches and a $199 price point, Google did a smart thing by aiming it at the Amazon Fire and not the iPad. The reviews have been positive (click here) and in my eyes, the most interesting Nexus 7 detail released yesterday is that it will be assembled in the United States (although details were vague on this point).

However, the more interesting product announced yesterday was the Nexus Q: a two-pound magic 8 ball looking device that streams content to your TV and uses the phone as the controller. At $299, its $200 more than an HD Apple TV box but it sure seems like a battle for the living room is brewing for the end-of-the-year holiday shopping season.

Click here for an interesting video of both the Nexus 7 and the Nexus Q.

Being halfway though the year, it’s a great time to do strategic review on how things are going. In addition, there is still time to make corrections with 180 plus days left in the year to go.

So here we go…

#1 – Focus & Simplify – I have to be honest here, staying on task is NOT easy. Too many things pop up – too many fires need to be put out – too many things I just can’t say NO to. I have my goals and “to-do” lists well organized on my iPhone, yet it’s still hard to stay on task. I’m glad its summertime when its easier to recharge the batteries and refocus. As per yesterday’s Leadership post and as always, we need to place our Big Rocks First (click here) to stay ahead and plan forward.

#2 – I need 2 academic research articles published this year – Of the 5 goals, this one is still the most important of the five. I’ve very confident that by the end of the summer, I will have two articles back in the review process. These two articles have been TASK #1 over the past four weeks and they are both moving along nicely.

#3 – Run the Broad Street Run – CHECK, Done, Accomplished – However it was ugly…very ugly – so ugly, that I was going back and forth for the 2 hours and 12 minutes of that 10 mile run between never doing this again and doubling-down to redeem myself next year. The fact of the matter was I was not healthy that weekend and it was very uncomfortable to run (I will spare you all the details). I’ve run Broad Street 45 to 50 minutes faster in my younger days and just three years ago, completed the race 35 minutes faster. Two weeks after Broad Street, I ran a five-mile race in 45:32, which is slightly higher than 9-minute miles (much closer to where I was physically). I’m still running and playing soccer in a pick-up men’s league. I’ll see if I do any more races this year.

#4 – Take a Deep Dive into Twitter – of the5 goals, I’ve worked the least on this one. Now 1/2 through the year, I’m surprised that Twitter has not captivated my imagination. I find Twitter useful and I will fully agree, it is best when you need to do a conversation – usually an immediate conversation. As the number of people I follow increases, I find it more difficult to follow conversations. I need to experiment more with Twitter Lists.

#5 – Double my DigNuggetville Traffic – I can say that I’m 1/3 of the way to this goal. Over the summer, a complete overall and resign of the site is in order. When things got really busy in May, I stop posting for almost four weeks, however, my daily traffic did not fall off the cliff as older posts with Google Juice kept getting hits. More progress on this goal will occur before the end of the summer.

Thank you all for listening. Stay tuned for the end of the summer roundup.

Well, the calendar tells us its summer time and we all know that come Labor Day, summer time comes to an end. Mr. Mike’s post below reminds us to plan ahead and plan forward. In my eyes, they only way we can accomplish this is by placing our Big Rocks First (click here for full post). We should make a significant effort to plan for those two or three seminal events (vacation anyone?) of the summer and then fit all the other activities around those big rocks.

Mr. Mike, the floor is yours…

To: The Great Leaders Who Have a Passion for Continuous Learning

With the beginning of summer for those of us in the northern hemisphere Philip Humbert ‘s article, “Make It One Heck of a Summer”, and its message of carpe diem again comes to mind. I share this at the beginning of each summer as its point continues to serve us well as a moment of reflection of something great to come. In the article he talks about how he and his wife in October seemed to always have the same conversation about summer: “Oh, no! Where did the summer go?” Moments later the house was filled with whining and moaning, a few complaints and exclamations that, “I can’t believe we let it get away again!” I believe his experience is similar to most of ours and that come October, we may look back with similar regrets.

His point is to remind us that we are in control. Our summer and how we will spend it is our hands. It is about goal setting. Human beings, he says, are by nature “goal-setting and goal-achieving creatures.” We set goals everyday – from the planning of our daily schedule to planning what we will eat during the week. So, if we are to have the greatest summer of our lives, we need to plan to make it the greatest. Start today. Circle dates on the calendar and mark them with things you want and love to do. Fill it up and let it overflow the brim. Live this summer as the greatest you have ever had! It is your beautiful and special life to live to its fullest. Stretch yourself to do new things, uncover new possibilities and happiness – for you, your family and those around you. And in October, look back proudly with satisfaction at what you have achieved, learned and experienced. Happiness and success is in your choosing and doing. Choose wisely and choose well!

Have a beautiful day, a fantastic week and a joyous and magnificent summer!!!

The headline I heard this morning on NPR (read full story from CNNmoney.com, click here) did not surprise me – Microsoft Buys Yammer – but at the same time, I’m disappointed in LinkedIn. Perhaps LinkedIn did not have the cash (although it could have been an all stock deal) or they did not see a strong business model in Yammer or they could have been strategically asleep (perhaps) – regardless, LinkedIn missed the boat on this opportunity.

Yes, LinkedIn is the best B-to-B social network going (I’m a big user) but at the same time, LinkedIn should not be so myopic (click here) and just define itself as a massive, digital, and interactive Rolodex.

In my eyes, LinkedIn should position itself towards digital services that are B-to-B. Yammer would have been a nice fit. WebEx would be an excellent premium service to LinkedIn users. Even live chat to have a team meeting among multiple members would be a nice service to offer its users. What about Ning? Microsoft bought Skype a while back for $8.5 billion and I was thinking these same myopic thoughts about LinkedIn. However, at the time LinkedIn was not a public company and $8.5 billion is a ridiculous amount of cash to spend on a firm that did not have a strong positive net cash flow.

The lesson is: if a firm defines itself to narrowly (e.g., myopically), the firm could find its business out of flavor in the near future. Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com are both struggling at the moment because the business that they defined for themselves 5 to 8 years ago isn’t viable to today’s marketplace because of LinkedIn. I just hope that LinkedIn does not find itself in the same predicament 5 or 8 years from now.

Today’s nugget keyword, like last week, is a phrase: “Biting the hand that feeds you” or as it is usually expressed “Don’t bite that hand that feeds you.”

The Usingenglish.com free dictionary (which also includes idioms) defines this phrase as,”When someone says this to you, they are trying to tell you not to act against those on whom you depend” (click here).

One of the Microsoft story lines over the past few days has been, “Microsoft is really going to piss off their partners (e.g., Dell, HP, etc) by developing their own tablet. They are going into competition against some of their biggest and oldest clients by developing a tablet!.” I even heard on a NPR radio broadcast that “Microsoft will have hell to pay for their actions.”

This storyline and all of its associated commentary sure has the flavor of “biting the hand that feeds you.” In Microsoft’s defense, however, its not like HP, Dell or anyone other Amazon’s Kindle and to a lesser part Amazon’s Fire, have done anything to dent Apple’s stranglehold of the tablet market. If I were Dell or HP, I would be cheering them on because without Microsoft, HP, Dell and anyone without an Android OS isn’t in fastest growing marketplace in the tech industry.

In today’s leadership post from Mr. Mike, he reminds me of a very useful nugget I picked up this year – do the unexpected. In the book Made to Stick, authors Chip & Dan Heath explain in great detail that expected things are not memorable but unexpected things are. If a leader wishes to be persuasive, then part of his or her message should be unexpected.

Mike, the floor is yours….

To: The Great Leaders Who Have a Passion for Continuous Learning

Stephen Sondheim, musical producer, wrote: “All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different, that what the author put on paper. That’s what makes a theater live. That’s why it persists.” The best-performing leaders do the same in the roles they choose that life calls them to play – they always bring that beautiful and special ‘something more.’

They are the ones who see challenges as opportunities for change and greatness. They are the ones who see a bigger picture and vision that captures and inspires the imagination. They are the ones who surprise us with the gift of the unexpected, the unique that creates a world of new possibilities. They are the ones who leave us with smile, a warm satisfaction and comfort and a sense of caring after a conversation. They are the ones who rekindle our passion to accomplish our greatest dreams of doing and being, fire our love of life and all its beauty and inspire us to be more than we ever dreamed we could be.

In all that you do, bring “something more” to everything that you do – your profession, your family, your community and those whom you serve. Make life’s theater come alive with your beautiful and special gifts that only you have been given. Inspire us all to greatness and joy beyond our wildest dreams.

Microsoft had a big announcement yesterday as they debuted their new Surface Tablet. The demo and the video (click here) shows their solid Metro interface, a neat cover that flips over to a flexi keyboard, docking station which almost turns the device into a desktop, and a build-in kickstand.

While I, as well as the entire tech world, will wait to see Walt Mossberg’s (The Wall Street Journal) review of the Surface before making any judgments, on the surface (sorry, I could not let that one go) appears to be a solid offering from the Microsoft team.

In recent months, Apple has been consistently valued by the stock market as one of the most valuable firms in the world. In such rarefied air, Apple is often scrutinized by Wall Street. Just this past March, even I took stab at where Apple’s stock was heading (click here).

Recently, a new round of prognosticators – some professionals, some rigorous amateurs – served up their latest predictions. First, up is from Gene Munster, a research analyst at Minneapolis brokerage firm Piper Jaffray and he is calling for Apple to reach $1,000 a share by 2014 and become the first U.S. company worth $1 trillion (click here). Second, is an investor roundup compiled by Philip Elmer-Dewitt, Editor of the Fortune Apple 2.0 blog and he found the average consensus places Apple’s target share price was at $724 to $753 (click here).

Today’s nugget keyword is not a keyword but rather a phrase. I was reading a blog post on AllthingsD the other day, and to no one’s surprise or dismay, Apple quietly announce that it is phasing out their social network Ping (click here for full article). With Twitter and soon to be Facebook integration in full order, CEO Tim Cook stated this week, “We tried Ping, and I think the customer voted and said ‘This isn’t something that I want to put a lot of energy into.’ ”

This discussion and blog post on Ping got me thinking about phrase by the legendary Peter Drucker, “Your backroom is someone else’s front room” (click here). One of Dr. Drucker’s fundamental beliefs is you should do only what you do best; play to your strengths. In addition, managers should partner with other firms who can complement their strengths to minimize their weaknesses.

Dr. Drucker defined the “front room” as your strengths, or what the firm does best; the activity that which stirs your passion and shows off your excellence. Everything else is the firm’s backroom, and most definitely, some other firm does it better. So the idea is to excel in your front room and find another firm to do your backroom.

In the Apple exemplar, we are all very familiar with Apple’s front room; iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook, etc., While Ping was in the front room, Apple was by no means excelling with Ping. There were multiple other firms who did social networking better than Apple, and Apple is finally partnering with them. I hope LinkedIn will be a partner in the near future too.

What surprises me most of this announcement is that every article that discusses either the Walter Isaacson book (click here) or the Adam Lashinsky book (click here) emphasizes that one of the main elements to Apple’s success is Apple’s ability to focus on just a few great things. I guess even the mighty Apple looses focus every now and then and spends too much energy on something that someone else does much better.